The long, short, and right about it. #25

It is been a collective scene that advertisement is the paramount activity in marketing despite the data which is the other way around.?

Sometimes I think like this,

There are 2 broad categories of businesses, one that spends exorbitantly on ads and the other that builds a platform, on which ads can be a big revenue. Every other business would be doing pretty well without ads.

A very notable example would be the case of YouTube Ads revenue Vs Amazon ads revenue. Amazon ads revenue is higher than YouTube ads revenue, quite an unusual one.?

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The view of advertisements

And, there have been a lot of justifications that are true, false and acceptable for advertisements. One such is,

How many businesses can take this as an example??

I think Aston Martin or similar types of brands can do such type of Brandvertising that may bring performance after decades. Aston Martin was founded in 1913.

The full article by Jeremy Bullmore can be read here.

In today’s environment

Advertisement is something that works if

• The ticket size is little
• The loss is negligible if the product is a failure
• If something is free like a trial offer
• Transactional in nature
• Free app installations
• Ticket sales for an offline event

For every other business, the law of advertising is pretty strong,

The first exposure of your brand should not be through ads

That leads to a handful of options,?

1. Your audience should have heard your product name in their network[Existing customers]
2. They should have consumed a piece of content from your social media pages[Brand content]
3. They should have read about your brand somewhere in magazines & publications[PR]
4. Should have read on blogs, online news channels[promotional activities & online PR]

If your product fulfils one or more points from the above, then advertisements start to work in the respective networks.

The success of online ads - Who contributes to it?

The major part of the successful online ads is from e-commerce brands through remarketing, which some call as retargeting.

Search ads - sure, but the competitive keywords price is going upwards.?

The division of Marketing and sales enablement?

Many businesses have to start with sales enablement at the initial stage of launching the business including direct selling. It is necessary. But, as soon as you reach a point to accommodate marketing, and building a brand you should start as quickly as possible.?

It seems like, organisations across the board can’t seem to get out of direct selling, meeting customers face to face, ABM in some cases because it is attributable, but that is how any small-medium and big organisation can start its journey. Once started and continued, it seems difficult to pull off from that road and start doing real marketing.

Sure, some business types need ABM and direct selling but they also get benefits from marketing.

But what is truly not acceptable and not necessary is doing sales enablement activities under the name of Marketing.

Why?

When we continue having sales enablement activities, we tend to lose out on the importance of marketing and often both start to head in opposite directions. At a point, Marketing is ignored totally and the entire organisation start to chase numbers. There is a whole industry[Newsletter-08] which does this.?

When we bring in marketing alongside sales activities, the conversion starts to happen because of all the marketing activities and the brand value put together. The conversion rate increases by doing good marketing. At some point in time, everything starts to perform.

If anybody tells you, sales are ultimate, let me tell you - They are selling sales or there are glorified(sales leaders) in their organisation - also, in some cases, it can be a lack of product, marketing or any other piece in the puzzle that is mitigated by the sales team.

An organisation is successful because they serve good products in the market, they have good people, their customers love them, there is good marketing, and there is a good sales team too. Everything plays a role in success.

Sales backed with Marketing is a better combination

and is a parallel activity.?

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Thank you for reading and appreciating the newsletter. I'll see you next Monday with another piece of writing in & around Marketing.?- Navanee Viswa.

Let me know which part of my writing resonated with you.

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